The Supreme Court today acknowledged that the income ceilings to get BPL ration cards was “very low”, but appeared to suggest it was for the government to raise the limit to realistic levels. “Nobody can dispute the fact that the problem is enormous. Given the fact that the purchasing power of money is so low, even if a family’s daily income is Rs 30 or Rs 40, they should get BPL...

A meticulously researched book by A. Vaidyanathan, Agricultural Growth in India: Role of Technology, Incentives and Institutions, is an illuminating scholarly work. Thinking about it one realizes the dismal and declining state of Indian agriculture and the poor governance at both Central and state government levels that has brought it to this sorry pass. A valuable compendium of data and analysis of Indian agriculture since Independence, it is a valuable...

What is a whistleblower protection law? A whistleblower is defined as someone who exposes wrongdoing, fraud, corruption or mismanagement. In many cases, this could be a person who works for the government who would report misconduct within the government or it could be an employee of a private company who reports corrupt practices within the company. The law that a government enacts to protect such persons who help expose corruption...

A handful of Jarawa tribesmen recently broke into a house in the village of Mathura in the Andaman islands. They left after taking away rice, sugar and coconut. The first people to successfully migrate out of Africa, the Jarawas came to the Andaman islands 60,000 years ago, scientists believe. Essentially hunter-gatherers, the tribespeople have traditionally survived on the raw meat of wild boar. But in the 1970s, a road (the...

In what is being hailed as the “first ever honour killing conviction” in Haryana, the Karnal Sessions Court on March 25 held six residents of Karora village guilty of a gruesome double murder. The sentencing will take place tomorrow. In April 2007, Manoj, 24, and Babli, 18, had drawn the ire of Karora’s khap panchayat for eloping to Chandigarh and getting married. They belonged to the same gotra, Berwal, and...